Bryan Wilson grew up surrounded by music. His grandfather, Tommie Davis, used to play gospel with blues great B.B. King and his mother once sang with an R&B band. Wilson spent his childhood shuffling between the Baptist, Apostolic and COGIC church services of his native Danville, IL (an hour south of Chicago) and came to appreciate musical elements of all of the denominations. However, when he was at Claflin University (in Columbia, SC), he attended a concert for the group The Kry that turned him on to Contemporary Christian Music. “I had never heard of them before but I was a fan from that day on,” Wilson says. “I started to listen to other CCM artists like Michael W. Smith, Anointed and Natalie Grant. It was a totally different vibe from the gospel music I was raised on and I really loved the different style of worship.”

On his forthcoming CD, “And It’s Over,” Wilson finally gets the opportunity to fuse the music he was weaned on with the music he came to love in college. During his teens, he recorded traditional gospel albums for Malaco Records that earned him Dove and Stellar Award nominations. Then, he put music aside to earn a degree in religion and philosophy at Claflin University before doing a year of masters of divinity study at Princeton Theological Seminary. Then, the music bug bit him again.

“When I was a kid I used to sing what producers gave me whether I liked it or not,” Wilson recalls. “I decided to make an album that I wanted to listen to myself so my manager and I bankrolled it.” The CD, “A Second Coming”, was a contemporary gospel set released in 2008. Billboard magazine’s gospel critic Gordon Ely named it one of the ten best CDs of the year.

However, Wilson’s new music blends some of the acoustic and rock-oriented Christian styles he heard in college with his gospel lineage. “The CD is really unique,” he adds. “Somebody at the record label called it beach music because some of the songs remind you of The Beach Boys or songs you might hear if you spent a day at the beach. When people are at the beach, they are happy so I don’t mind that tag because these are really upbeat, happy songs that express my faith in God.” One of the songs is an unplugged, acoustic guitar rendition of “Amazing Grace” that was recently featured in a BBC 2 radio documentary, “How Sweet the Sound: The Amazing Grace Story.”